The Colonial Bloody Hangover

I wasn't going to write this post (primarily because it's a little whiny and a lot long), but then my Facebook acquaintance (and friend of my friend Swati) wrote this, and since when have I modestly held back my two bits?

It's amazing--or so I thought--the sheer number of people who asked me if I was British right from the second day I landed in the States (the first day I only spoke to a Canadian, who had lived in London and Yorkshire and could easily tell a pseudo-posh English accent from an Indian public school one). I briefly wondered whether it was an American pick-up line for unAmericans that pop culture hadn't seen fit to let the rest of world know, especially since the question served as a conversation-opener on more than one occasion, but since my opinion of my attraction quotient floats an inch above ground level, I abandoned this line of enquiry soon enough.

As days went by, I realised it was less the accent, which waxes and wanes depending on company and my temper (my enunciation sharpens to razorblade finesse when I've been shaken or stirred), and more the kind of English I speak. In subtle ways, it is vastly different from the English of my American peers. Sometimes it provides moments of comic panic. Like on a snowing December morning, when I ran out of my flat to the campus bus stop in jeans, a thin sweater and untied shoes only, because that was all I had on when the driver had called to say the bus would be at the stop "momentarily". You know, for a moment. So if I missed it I was looking at a thirty minute uphill trudge in and through the snow. Another time a friend's flight couldn't get clearance to take off, and looking to soothe the passengers, the stewardess decalred that plane "will take off momentarily". For about two seconds, my friend thought he was going to have a heart attack. Take off momentarily? You mean, take off and crash right back down? Then don't bloody take off, and let me out! It took a while to register that when Americans say 'momentarily', they mean in a moment, like one would say 'immediately'. Or, if 'one' were a stuffy one, 'presently'.

And when words aren't differently meant, they are completely absent. I'm yet to meet an American who exclaims "Rubbish!" when she disbelieves or disapproves of something. There are no bins, only trash cans. Which actually made me a wee bit queasy in the beginning, because ready-to-eat food is also found in cans, not tins. And of course, neither my endearments nor my swearing has quite the desired effect. "You're such a peach!" was once met with a doubtful, "Er, um, can I be an apple instead?"And to be asked to explain what a bugger or a sod "actually means" sort of takes the wind out of one's fulminating sails. And very few people get cricket terminology, of course. Hit for six, back to the pavilion (which I say often enough), batting to the same/other team, calling a tricky question a googly. Even academic parlance is different. People grade exams, not mark (or, may we be forgiven our smug teacheresque superiority, 'correct') answerscripts. The bastards who hawk over exams and make a communal sharing of data impossible are proctors, not invigilators. Heads of departments are usually department chairs. Soccer for football, aid for aide, the explicit 'bathroom' for the more prim 'loo' or 'restroom', the list just goes on.

There are stylistic differences, too. The most annoying instance of crossed wires, f'rsinstance, occured when a irksomely loud and cantankerous housemate of a friend started screaming at me--and I mean literally--because I had unwittingly sat on 'her' chair. "Such duclet tones, my dear", I observed dryly as I lifted myself off the unmarked chair. To which she spat, "I'm not your dear!", and then looked triumphantly at me, as if that was a devastatingly cutting comeback, instead of the pathetically lame knee-jerk response it was. This Brit exchange student once observed, quite acidly, that America is "the country irony overlooked". I know from personal experience this is a blatantly inaccurate generalisation, but either because they're too friendly or too politically correct, the average American does seem to shy away from [what we think of as] the caustic approach to language, in public anyway. Which makes me feel like a right bitch sometimes, I don't mind admitting. Sarcasm has been hardwired into my system (and before I left Cal I frankly didn't realise that 'friendly' and 'sarcastic' were mutually exclusive qualities).

And yet the way I speak hasn't changed a bit during my short stint abroad. If anything, the massive sea of linguistic difference has made me to cling harder to my speech patterns, further reinforcing beliefs about my Britishness. Usually I just brush it off, because after all we speak English on a mass scale because we were a British colony and learned their version of the language. And an American who hasn't lived in India extensively is unlikely to pick up the Indian flavour to the language. However, what bothers me is how the texture of the language spoken in India is changing so completely. I can no longer identify with the speech of people younger to me by less than a decade. Of some of my peers too, in fact, and most certainly of films and the telly. But I can certainly identify them with my recently acquired American acquaintances. Apart from a general tendency to emphasise 'r's (gurrrls, firrst) instead of nearly swallowing them, the two persistant Americanisms I notice are 'apartment' for flat and 'mom' for mum (including in the much-vaunted propah newspapers, which publish tips for "working moms with kids"). To a lesser extent, 'math' for maths. And I suppose if I was a true believer in human freedom to choose it wouldn't have bothered me, but I clearly am not and it does. Particularly 'mom' or 'mommy', when spoken with a non-American or non-Canadian accent, irritates me no end.

An argument I'm perenially offered against my distaste is that I have a colonial hangover, that I still live in an elitist past where the all cultural aspects of the raj was revered and imitated and therefore am intolerant of the natural metamorphosis of language. All of this is rubbish, but of course that is what I am expected to say, so I feel I must elaborate on my contemptuous dismissal. First, to be Indian and say things like "That only, no" and "what to tell, only" regularly and still insist the English we speak is the Received Standard is ridiculous and ridiculously un-self aware. And since we clearly do not speak the British normative speech, our English is our own. A consequence of a colonial past, and not a 'hangover'.

Secondly, all those that argue--and rightly so--that English isn't a foreign language in India, must also accept that if English is an Indian language then it has certain specific parameters that distinguish it from, for instance, Australian English. And while these parameters may have been British in origin, they have shed that association the moment the language in its entirety was accepted as Indian, and we began to modify and add to it in accordance with our respective mother tongues. This addition and modification is part of the process of natural evolution of a language at a certain place. Therefore I'm not bothered by verbs spelled with a 'z' instead of a 's' ('criticize', 'colonize'), although personally I prefer the latter. However, to suddenly start 'visiting with' instead of merely visiting or cooking flavourful healthful foods instead of well-flavoured healthy food--and to avidly accept such spellings as 'proffessional' and 'proffesor' before even the whole of the US have accepted them as the norm--show either a complete ignorance of India's own English and indirectly reinforce the argument that English is not an Indian language at all and we must slavishly follow whatever Caucasian form currently dominates the globe. Or, worse, it shows a wilful lack of respect for--indeed, dismissal of--one's Indian identity, coupled with a pathetic hankering to become a subject of American cultural neocolonialism.

And thirdly, it might well be argued that access to American English is more democratic, since anyone with an internet connection can have it, unlike the expensive and urban 'English-medium' public schools which insist on 'colour' and 'labour' being spelt thusly. But this is rather a simplistic explanation that doesn't hold much water. All one has to do to maintain one's linguistic identity as an English-speaking Indian is to choose Indian English (or, failing which, it's closest cousin, British English) as the system's and browser's default language. To the masses who rise up to wail, "But I don't know how to do that!"--mate, if you can create an Orkut profile, you can bloody well do this little thing. And if you can't, learn how. It takes a great deal less effort than taking to the streets and shouting to protect 'Indian culture'. Or have a thundering argument in favour of using the matribhasha or rashtrabhasha at the local tea shop. In case it slipped your attention, English is also a constitutional language of the Indian Union. Do some actual protecting of 'Indian' culture for a change. It takes six seconds.

And finally, if you must blindly and servilely ape the linguistic parameters of a country, please choose a country other than the US. A nation that has striven over the decades to create an English distinct from the rest of the world's--and reflective exclusively of itself--is the most ironic choice of object for such thoughtless, self-subsuming, servile worship. If I were an American and a thoughtful person, I would be... amused at such antics. And it wouldn't be benevolent amusement.

Previous US-related rants here and here.